Math skills are critical for success in economics courses. However, instructors often lack information about the level and extent of their students' underpreparedness in mathematics. In this paper, we describe the development of two new assessments of math skills relevant for introductory and intermediate economics courses. The assessments may be used early in the semester to evaluate students and identify those with weak math skills. With data from introductory and intermediate microeconomics courses, we employ two different methodologies, a simple threshold analysis and a more sophisticated LASSO logit approach, to illustrate how our assessments identify students at risk of underperforming.
Results from an experiment in Fall 2013 of 902 incoming students at this university are reported. In this experiment, after students were given a basic math assessment to ensure they had the necessary math skills to take a principles of economics course, they were randomly allocated to a treatment or control group to test whether there was a significant impact of test format, calculator use, and calculator type on students’ scores. The interaction of calculator use/type and test format was also tested. The results from this experiment suggest that each treatment had a significant positive impact on students’ assessment scores, with much variation depending on the type of question asked and the level of performance. JEL Classifications: A22, C23
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